The GOP's master strategist - William Kristol - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, Sept, 1994 by Jon Meacham

That, in a nutshell, is Kristol's problem. Politically, the Republicans, who have been railing against welfare for 30 years, can't be seen abetting a Democratic president who will be able to say in 1996 that he's putting people on the dole to work. So Kristol, Murray, Gingrich, Bennett, and other Republicans are racing to Clinton's right.

You could argue that this is merely a case of the GOP making a principled stand in opposition. But you would be wrong. Up until Clinton's election, Republicans were all for welfare-to-work; only since then has the GOP mainstream gone over to Murray's new thesis, laid out in a 1993 Wall Street Journal op-ed: that the problem driving the underclass is illegitimacy, not welfare. That's where things get tricky. Of course it's true that children born out-of-wedlock are more likely to be poor than legitimate kids, and illegitimate children in welfare homes are even more likely to have a hard time of it. But if conservatives thought illegitimacy, not work, was the real policy problem, then why did they only begin talking about it as central after Clinton co-opted the welfare-to-work issue? Because they needed a political trick to trump a smart Democratic president. Despite their basic agreement on how to solve a catastrophic problem - the plight of the underclass - the GOP, sensing a Democratic advantage, moved the goalposts.

Of course, Kristol hasn't got much to work with in the way of substantive GOP policy alternatives that aren't close - perilously close, in Kristol's view - to what Clinton and moderate Democrats want. Clinton was elected, remember, after he carefully distanced himself from traditional liberal dogma on these matters. He acknowledges, joining with many conservatives, that schools have to be accountable for performance; that work must be part of welfare reform; that violent crime has to be strongly punished; and that many of our troubles are, at bottom, the result of family breakdown. (Quayle and Kristol had their "Murphy Brown" speech on family values; Clinton had his speech to black ministers in Memphis.)

Rhetorically, then, Kristol is frequently forced back to anti-government shibboleths: "In our day and age, government has become such a problem and is so much too big and so bad for our character that simply cutting government is a pretty good practical program for a while." These arguments would have more force if the Republicans had a record of anti-government action to stand on. But they don't. The federal payroll grew in the eighties; federal spending under Reagan increased 3 percent a year beyond inflation; the number of federal bureaucrats writing regulations in 1992 was 122,000 - more than there were at the end of the Carter administration. Nevertheless, sensing political opportunity, Kristol and the Republicans shamelessly batter government.

That's good politics, but it doesn't change anything. There are real problems out in the real world, beyond think tanks and strategy memos. And those problems - bad schools, a growing underclass, increasingly violent crime - undoubtedly require enlightened governance if they are to be solved. And enlightened governance comes not from shrewd political tactics but from a willingness to concede a point here and there. The concession may not win you votes, or the sound-bite you want, or the lead quote in Sunday's New York Times, but it's what the great men in our history have done to do great things.